


Names // Belief

by headless-killjoys (neepynoodles)



Series: Zone Five Quarantine Fair [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Origin Story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24034084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neepynoodles/pseuds/headless-killjoys
Summary: Jet Star discovers a flame burning inside him, and finds his name.---Day 3! This has two parts for the two prompts of the day.This is set in my dullahan AU but you don't need much context to read this since it's an origin story-style sorta piece.
Series: Zone Five Quarantine Fair [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1729321
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Names // Belief

He remembered the day clearly. He was young, barely 15 years old. He hadn’t even chosen a name for himself yet. His hands had been shaking, covered in the blood of another killjoy, they had clenched into tight fists. He had felt a heat burning inside himself, unlike any warmth he had felt before. Dracs were surrounding him as he scrambled to his feet, quickly snatching the mask of his friend in the event he made it out of this alive. The dracs seemed content to taunt him, confident enough in their own abilities to lower their guard for a moment. It was like a fire had been started inside him. The ray guns and laughter pointed at him were simply the match being struck. The heat was becoming overwhelming, burning hotter as his own anger and despair grew. 

A voice resonated through the ground and through his body. 

**< Live.>**

At some point he had squeezed his eyes shut, but the deep breath he took meant he was still alive, which was good. He opened one eye, then the other in shock. The dracs were gone. Not just dead, but completely gone. All that remained were ashes and still burning fragments of fabric and ray gun pieces. There was a glowing light around the edges of his vision, it faded from orange to yellow then disappeared entirely. He glanced down at himself and stumbled back as he stared at his hands, turning them over and back again repeatedly. For a split second, they had looked as if they were burning with a flame that had originated from within him. But then it was gone. 

He quickly discovered that gravity didn’t mean too much to him. On his way to the closest mailbox, he was spotted by another patrol. His heart was pounding in his chest and the heat returned, this time burning through his legs as he ran. He lifted a hand to push his hair out of his face and almost tripped over himself as he glanced down and realised his shoes were burning. Light emanated from his boots, surrounding them with bright yellow and white as his footsteps lifted and he flew through the night, fuelled by sound of the dracs firing at him. 

He didn’t feel real. He believed in the supernatural, in the Phoenix Witch, and Destroya, and the ghosts that lingered on the edge of the safe zones. But the power he had felt was beyond what he could understand. It  _ excited  _ him. And that excitement brought the warmth back in a self perpetuating cycle that kept him eager to discover what else he could do. He had no name, he was just another face in the desert, another fist raised against BL/ind. And now he had another weapon. 

He had contemplated different names, but none of them seemed to fit right. He didn’t know who he was. He looked in the mirror and felt wrong. The warmth he felt inside never seemed to reflect outside. He felt unbalanced, like the flame would grow too strong and consume him. 

Once he started attempting to train himself, it became easier. He had been terrified that he could only use his newly discovered power in near-death situations, in moments of anger or terror. But over the weeks, he taught himself to harness it through any happiness he felt and at will. His hands burned the most, as if the heat inside him was being channeled through his fingers and the light burst out of his hands in a brilliant white and yellow glow. They were the easiest to control, if he concentrated hard enough, he realised he could set his hands aflame with a mere thought, and it was even easier to channel that energy into the shots he fired from his ray gun. 

His use of his hidden powers had become more controlled and less spontaneous than before. The night he had disintegrated the dracs the first time had left him exhausted and he had tried to recreate the energy burst later, letting the heat burn hotter and hotter without releasing it until it had burst out of his body and set his entire being aflame. He had just barely managed to catch himself as he collapsed onto his knees afterwards, but the wide grin it brought to his face had made the pain worth it. 

At 17, he still had no name, but there was one that had been lingering in his head for a while. He liked the sound of it, liked the warmth of it. He had mostly kept to himself in the desert even though he had friends across the zones. He held onto the name like a whisper of a secret, not yet spoken aloud, but he revelled in the joy of having chosen a name for himself. It reminded him of his powers, of the rush of energy and power, of the heat that ran through his veins as he struck down dracs and burnt through BL/ind outposts. 

By chance, one night he sat curled up by a fire he had started himself. His eyes were trained on the sky above, tracing over the constellations. He remembered some of them from pieces of old magazines and books he had found around the zones, relics of the past. A bright flash of light caught his eye, arching across the sky before it vanished. His eyes widened and he scrambled to his feet. He had only heard about them from old stories but seeing one in front of his own eyes was as if the flame inside him had been ignited all of a sudden and he was faintly aware that he was glowing again. The golden light was stronger, hotter, as yet another shooting star streaked through the dark ink of the night sky. 

A low voice seemed to speak to him through the ground itself, the sound reverberating through his entire body. The same one that had spoken before he had used his powers for the first time. 

**< My scion.> **

He  _ felt _ the voice more than he heard it, but the flame inside him burned hotter and hotter. His vision went white. 

**< You have a gift. You are not like the others.> **

Golden light swirled across his eyes, and then it receded as his vision slowly returned. The flame still felt warm, but it enveloped his whole body. It had consumed him, but it was controlled, careful, as if his fears had all been scorched away in a single moment. 

He understood. 

**< Now, my scion. Your name?> **

He took a deep breath, and the weight on his shoulders lifted. He had made his decision. He knew who he was. 

“Star. My name is Jet Star.” 


End file.
